Hyundai A-League Season 8 Officially Launched

THE Hyundai A-League 2012/13 Season was officially launched today with simultaneous events held in Sydney and Melbourne including another showcase of the game’s WE ARE FOOTBALL campaign.

THE Hyundai A-League 2012/13 Season was officially launched today with simultaneous events held in Sydney and Melbourne including another showcase of the game-s WE ARE FOOTBALL campaign.

Over 80 grassroots participants and representatives from all 10 Hyundai A-League Clubs formed WE ARE FOOTBALL presentations at Parramatta Stadium and AAMI Park to celebrate the launch of Season 8 of the competition.

Hyundai A-League stars including Tomas Rogic, John Hutchinson, Marcos Flores, Richard Garcia, Alessandro Del Piero, Archie Thompson, Emile Heskey, Shinji Ono and Brett Emerton were on hand to welcome the season return which kicks off on Friday, 5 October 2012 with the Melbourne derby between Victory and Heart.

All 140 matches played by 10 Clubs across 27 Rounds will be broadcast live and exclusively on Fox Sports.

FFA today announced that Italian subscription TV channel Premium Calcio had signed an agreement to broadcast live all Sydney FC matches. The agreement includes a weekly highlights program and coverage of the Hyundai A-League Finals Series.

Hyundai A-League highlights are broadcast across Europe, Asia and North America under an international distribution agreements.

This season also sees the introduction of the Hyundai A-League-s newest Club, Western Sydney Wanderers FC, dubbed Australia-s newest, oldest Club, due to the areas rich heritage in football and its strong connection to its grassroots participants and the development of football in the region.

To date the Hyundai A-League in its first seven seasons of the competition has attracted 9,347,346 million fans to 815 Hyundai A-League and Finals Series matches. This season will see the league reach the 10,000,000 mark for attendances.

Last season saw huge increases in average attendance, TV audiences, online traffic, social media use and memberships sold. This season is already setting up to break those figures and continue the impressive growth of the competition.

“In every one of the seven previous seasons, the Hyundai A-League has changed and grown with new stars, new Clubs, ever-increasing quality of play and new highs in entertainment value,” said FFA CEO Ben Buckley.

“With marquee players of the highest quality, a new Club representing the oldest region for football in Australia and an impressive line-up of players and coaches I can say without any doubt that season 8 will be like nothing we-ve seen before.

“Now is a fantastic time you to get involved in the Hyundai A-League, whether it-s by becoming a member of a Club, attending matches at a stadium, watching at home on television through our partner Fox Sports, or connecting online through websites and social media - we all have our part to play.”